Sweet!

One of the Christmas traditions here in Sandy Bay is an "open house" at Tuck's Candy Factory....

Yes, that's World Famous Motif #1©  in the background....

On weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Tuck's invites the public to come into the factory and see how their candies (a wide array of chocolates, hard candies and salt-water taffy, in a bewildering range of flavors) are made. It's all done the old-fashioned labor-intensive way; that's no surprise, as Tuck's has been around since 1929.

The hard candies begin with a large quantity of sugar, cut slightly with water and cream of tartar, heated to 300 degrees in a copper kettle, at which point it has become a syrupy mass. The liquid is poured onto a special table, where it begins to cool...

Somehow, I was reminded of my days working with fiberglass....

From there, the sweet globs are hung from a hook, where they are twisted and pulled to remove air bubbles. Flavoring (peppermint, etc.) is also added at this stage....

The mixture turns white (sort of) as air is forced out

Then the stretched, tugged and flavored sugar paste, still cooling, is taken to yet another table, where it is further pummeled and either rolled into long, thin tubes (for hand-formed candy canes) or stretched flat and cut into discrete strips to be fed into a vintage hand-cranked machine...

Some engineer spent hours -- maybe days! -- designing this candy machine....

It emerges from the fiendish device as ribbon candy, to the delight of the audience....

Will there be free samples???

Other types of candies are produced by machines of similar vintage. The taffy-wrapping device (older than Tuck's!) is worth a separate post and, in time, will get one. But the small-mint cutter is neat, too...

Oddly enough, Tuck's doesn't sell these mini-mints nowadays

I'm not that much of a candy-eater, but enjoyed watching the show and very much enjoyed munching on samples. All that hand-work pays off: I've never tasted better candy! And yes, I put my name in the box for a chance to win the Christmas six-foot chocolate-filled candy cane!

P.S. I'll do the same when Tuck's has a drawing for its giant chocolate rabbit come Easter....

PARENTHETICAL TOO-GOOD-TO-LEAVE-OUT THOUGHT: The local newspaper never disappoints. This little gem comes from Friday's police blotter: "A woman called to report a barking dog on White Way at 12:46 a.m. Wednesday and was referred to the dog officer. According to police, the caller said she had spoken to the dog, but that it had refused to comply with her request that it stop barking."

All I can say is: "Woof...."